Welcome to the International Skeptics Forum, where we discuss skepticism, critical thinking, the paranormal and science in a friendly but lively way. You are currently viewing the forum as a guest, which means you are missing out on discussing matters that are of interest to you. Please consider
registering so you can gain full use of the forum features and interact with other Members. Registration is simple, fast and free! Click here to register today.

Now, let's ask ourselves the question that troubles the best minds of the EU, is 'the holohoax fundamentally different from other experiences of state terror and mass extermination'? Answer: yes, the holohoax is fundamentally different from examples of other state sponsored terror save one, the only extensively studied historical event comparable to the holohoax is the Salem witch trials.

Of course this map deals with is Islam as the religion and says nothing about race. However, I've been to Syria and I worked in the region for 20+ years and employed people from all these countries. Most Muslim's from the ME are white. This excludes the majority of Egyptians, those that have African parentage, etc.

It seems Howdy is being a bit panicky.

I guess that is because most people from the Middle East are white. Who panicky? Me? Me no panicky. I'm a Christian from Canada and like most Christians from Canada, I'm Black.

I don't understand the tu quoque issue to have been so clear cut nor that the Dönitz ruling signaled acceptance of such a defense. In fact, I think that the principle of denying the tu quoque was, if a bit tortuously, maintained in the Dönitz judgment.

First, legal commentators seem generally to concur that tu quoque was not a permitted defense at the IMT.

For example, just two examples: (1) Robert Cryer, Håkan Friman, Darryl Robinson, & Elizabeth Wilmshurst, “the defense was not permitted to raise the issue of crimes committed by the Allies.” (An Introduction to International Criminal Law and Procedure, 2007) (2) Susan Mary Twist, for example, wrote, “the IMT ruled the defence of tu quoque inadmissible.” (“Retrospectivity at Nuremberg: The Nature and Limits of a Schmittian Analysis” (PhD dissertation, University of Central Lancashire, 2012)

However, the commentators also recognize the issue of submarine warfare and Dönitz’s defense in that matter.

Different defenses were raised in this matter at the IMT. Defense attorney Servatius, for example, argued that the orders were not illegal because the Hague Convention was obsolete. (Conot, Justice at Nuremberg, 1983, 2009, p 325)

The strongest case, however, was argued by defense attorney Kranzbühler who put it like this (IMT, Blue Series, v VIII, p 549):
In other words, Kranzbühler’s argument was that no one broke international law, not that everyone violated the law. The gray area is that Kranzbühler got to this proposition via the reality that everyone acted the same way. Persico describes Kranzbühler’s interrogatory as ingenious (Nuremberg: Infamy on Trial, 1994, p 338).

I understand Kranzbühler’s plea to be different to the case in which everyone is driving over the speed limit and the driver who gets pulled over pleads “they did it too" meaning that other drivers were also violating the speed limit. It is more like the driver who was singled out arguing that there was no speed limit because the limit didn't apply in the circumstances and thus everyone was within his or her rights to drive at fast speeds through the zone.

Conot makes this explicit in discussing Nimitz’s testimony: “Kranzbühler thus won his point. . . .[H]e had obtained the affirmation that American submarine practices had paralleled the Germans . . . and that, therefore, in practice, if not strictly in theory, German naval warfare had been ‘legal.’” 0p 417) Telford Taylor was of the same view as Conot, writing in The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials (1993, 2013) that Kranzbühler had “turned from the tu quoque to an issue of the interpretation of the London Agreement of 1936,” namely the technical definition of merchant vessels under that agreement (p 400).

The tribunal’s acceptance of Kranzbühler’s interrogatory spoke of its being “appropriate to construe the international law of submarine warfare by determining what actions were taken by the powers during the war.” (p 411) Taylor also wrote that the questions later put to Nimitz didn’t go to either the London Agreement or the definition of merchant ship, the very points on which Kranzbühler’s argument relied. (p 409)

All this, as Taylor noted, was not so clear as Kranzbühler’s argument but was not really the tribunal's admitting a tu quoque pleading either. Taylor’s opinion on the matter? “[T]he line between tu quoque and the meaning of ‘merchant ship’ in the London Charter was a very thin one” (p 409), but Nimitz’s testimony “had supported . . . Kranzbühler’s argument that armed merchant ships were not ‘merchant vessels’ within the meaning and protection of the 1939 Agreement . . .” (p 483)

Apologies for the delay in responding. IANAL, but my understanding is that the essence of tu quoque is "if I am guilty, you are guilty." So I'm not clear on how "you are not guilty, therefore I am not guilty" isn't tu quoque.

__________________Handy responses to conspiracy theorists' claims:
1) "I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." --Charles Babbage
2) "This isn't right. This isn't even wrong." --Wolfgang Pauli
3) "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." --Inigo Montoya

The essence of the tu quoque offense is that because you broke the law, you can't charge me with the same offense. Kranzbühler's argument, accepted by the IMT, was different to this: he argued that there was no law against the naval actions in question, partly basing his pleading on the technical definition of merchant ship in the law. In his telling, neither side broke the law because both committed actions permitted under the law, whereas in a tu quoque pleading he would have argued that both sides broke the law, but no matter, because "you did it, too."

Kranzbühler's clever argument was not that the Allies' similar actions made the acts legal (or put them beyond the court's reach) - as in a tu quoque argument - but that the actions were never illegal in the first place. Kranzbühler thus didn't charge the Allies with lawbreaking equal to that of the Germans'; rather, he said that the Germans' actions weren't lawbreaking either.

By accepting this argument, the tribunal didn't technically do away with its general rejection of the tu quoque defense.

__________________. . . all this would be absurd if it weren't happening, now let's go and eat.
- Jose Saramago, The Stone Raft

I am reading "Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy" by Eric Metaxas. It is the non-fiction story of a German pastor who saw Hitler and the Nazis coming a mile away. He ended up in the grave for his trouble after having first protested against the Nazis for their take over of German churches then eventually plotting to kill Hitler.

It is noted in this book (and other places) that in the early years of the Third Reich the Nazis often showed a kinder PR face to the world playing down their evil intentions. In some cases Hitler and Goebbels actively mis-stated their intentions so as to be more palatable to the German and international publics.

It is perfectly possible for a denier to lift some of these phony PR quotes from the record and repeat them so as to make it seem Hitler and the Nazis weren't so bad after all.

It is noted in this book (and other places) that in the early years of the Third Reich the Nazis often showed a kinder PR face to the world playing down their evil intentions. In some cases Hitler and Goebbels actively mis-stated their intentions so as to be more palatable to the German and international publics.
.

And there was also the fact that most of the world still remembered WWI, and sincerely felt sorry for the Germans for the Versailles treaty. The latter resulted in attempts to alleviate the harsher effects of the VT via the Dawes and Young Plans, and massive capital investment by the US in Germany in the 20s and early 30s. The former was also the reason for the appeasement carried out by the British in the latter half of the 30s.

No one wanted any war, except for the Nazis, and everyone else literally tried bending over backwards to appease them and prevent war. While the clause in Versailles assigning all of the guilt for starting WWI on the German empire was inaccurate and unfair, it's entirely justified and factually correct to assign the responsibility for starting WWII on Nazi Germany, despite what some idiots here would like to think.

Sigh! I see that I am being spammed with the NAFCASH challenge there as well!!! From the first link above, half way down the page and "CWhite" is asking Roberto "do you deny that your buddy "Nessie" has answered the following questions with the following answers...."

I don't bother posting on CODOH, so did not know about that. On RODOH there are now five threads on page 1 alone, where I am being spammed and an attempt is being made to bully me into continuing with NAFCASH.

I e-mailed Greg Gerdes a while back asking for details about the so called "National Association of Forensic Historians", members, qualifications, association rules etc. He just replied with abuse and a refusal to give any information.

I presume Gerdes has something on Hannover at CODOH and Scott/Depth Check at RODOH, that they let him repeatedly post multiple yes/no questions.

It is weird that a clearly hoax association is being a lot of publicity by denialist forums.

Yesterday French President Emmanuel Macron pronounced a speech at the occasion of the commemoration of the Vel'd'Hiv roundup, which took place 75 years ago in Paris.

In his speech he evoked the link between complot theories, racism and antisemitism:

Quote:

Planetary complot theory, phantasms about global finance, insidious iconography, identity angers which mobilize the most toxic clichés: all this spreads at huge speed and reaches the most gullible or receptive minds. Racism and anti-Semitism can rely on never seen propaganda means in order to pursue their undermining work. Social networks are their great purveyors and we have not yet realized their influence in this respect. Our magistrates and law enforcement forces needs to be better trained to this. (free translation from http://www.conspiracywatch.info/rafl...-mondiale.html)

This is beyond idiotic but it is cant in the west. The whole point of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact from the German side was to avoid a war with the west, which it desperately wanted to avoid, and offered to settle many times to be met with disdain and rejection from Churchill, a Zionist stooge, and other warmongers in Britian.

A few refs: google 'President Roosevelt's Campaign to Incite War in Europe' to read about the machinations of Roosevelt and the Jews prior to the war.

__________________"The more I argued with them, the better I came to know their dialectic. First they counted on the stupidity of their adversary, and then, when there was no other way out, they themselves simply played stupid."

This is beyond idiotic but it is cant in the west. The whole point of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact from the German side was to avoid a war with the west, which it desperately wanted to avoid, and offered to settle many times to be met with disdain and rejection from Churchill, a Zionist stooge, and other warmongers in Britian.

A few refs: google 'President Roosevelt's Campaign to Incite War in Europe' to read about the machinations of Roosevelt and the Jews prior to the war.

This is beyond idiotic but it is cant in the west. The whole point of the Soviet-German non-aggression pact from the German side was to avoid a war with the west, which it desperately wanted to avoid, and offered to settle many times to be met with disdain and rejection from Churchill, a Zionist stooge, and other warmongers in Britian.

You are aware that Churchill wasn't in power until after Germany invaded France? The policy was appeasement before then.

And who is this 'Zionist stooge' you list?

(It's Britain, by the way.)

__________________The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.Bertrand Russell
Zooterkin is correct Darat
Nerd! Hokulele
Join the JREF Folders ! Team 13232

You are aware that Churchill wasn't in power until after Germany invaded France? The policy was appeasement before then.

And who is this 'Zionist stooge' you list?

(It's Britain, by the way.)

Britian was a small independent duchy near Liechtenstein. They were by all accounts a bunch of REAL bastards. It was wiped out in 1942 when a lost Italian truck drove off the road and landed atop the small shed where the capital was located.